The Eye of a Needle
by MidKnight Rider
Summary: This one and the other two stories I posted were actually written in the 1980s either by hand or on a typewriter I am putting them onto the harddrive in no particular order This is a missing scene from Paradise Syndrome K/S/M no slash


Spock stood, refusing to acknowledge that he was hovering, and studied Kirk's face. His Captain quivered in an aura of distress more powerful than any Spock had ever experienced. His face was a flat mask of grief, a deep anguish caused by the death of his wife and child. It was worse, much worse, than the grief the Captain had beaten back upon the death of Edith Keeler. Edith's death had at least had meaning, something almost noble that had made it bearable. This – the loss of Miramanee and her unborn child – was just senseless. How many times could a human endure falling into the abyss of such pain?

Spock went to a cabinet and produced a glass and tall bottle of amber colored liquid. He poured the contents into the glass and held it out to Jim.

There was a moment's hesitation. Jim looked up, his eyes glassy, his normal alertness blurred as if he had been staring into a sun for too long. Spock clamped down hard on the rush of concern that threatened him. The thought came unbidden: _I don't think he cares one way or the other if he lives or dies at the moment._

He also fought the rush of relief that threatened him when Kirk finally reached for the glass and took it from him. It was movement at least, an awareness of a world outside of his crushing grief; though Spock would prefer it if his Captain wanted to hit something, or break something, or take off on a fast horse. He would prefer it if the Captain would shout, or rant. He knew how to deal with that Kirk, the one who would rail against injustice and fight with his last breath for life. He would prefer it if the Captain was in a blind, incoherent rage. He even knew how to deal with a Kirk so devastated that his tears could fall like rain. Men like Jim Kirk fought the darkness every moment, struggled and perjured and fought like demons before letting anything blot out the sun.

But the man before him seemed to have lost the bright center of his being. The man before him was in pieces, the smallest of which would fit through the eye of a needle.

"Isn't supplying me with alcohol McCoy's job?" Jim asked.

Spock clasped his hands behind his back, military 'at ease.'

"McCoy is avoiding you."

The glass froze centimeters from Jim's lips. He looked up at his First Officer and found logic and grace there, a peaceful calm one could fall into. Then he glanced around the room, as if puzzled, as if only now realizing that McCoy was missing. He paused a moment longer and then bolted the hot liquid, letting the bite and warmth flow down his throat and spread through his limbs.

"Why would McCoy do a thing like that?" Jim asked.

Spock took the empty glass and refilled it. _Why indeed_, he thought. _Why does the doctor do anything? Why does he so often_ say _one thing and mean something entirely different? _Spock saw no logic in the doctor's actions or in his guilt. But Spock had learned not to look for logic from McCoy.

He stilled his thoughts and gave the glass back to Jim. He had trained himself to stand willingly at Kirk's shoulder, to back him without question or intrusion, and to give his own blunt honest opinion when asked for it.

"He thinks you blame him for her death," Spock said, evenly, and after a pause he added, "And he blames himself."

Kirk leveled his gaze at Spock as if certain he'd misheard the Vulcan. "Bloody hell," he muttered, finally and once more drained the bourbon from the glass. For a moment Spock thought he might hurl the glass at the wall and hoped that he would. But Jim just turned his gaze inward again and sank back in the chair.

Spock refilled the glass again, set it on the desk in front of Jim and then sat down in a chair across from him. Resting his elbows on the arms of the chair he steepled his fingers before him and continued to regard the specter of his Captain.

Jim picked up the glass but this time he only held it lightly, twisting it between his fingers and staring ahead at nothing.

"It wasn't his fault. If anyone's it was mine. I was their chosen leader. I ignored what they were telling me, what _she _was telling me. While you gave up food and sleep to save them, I played at being a god, like a lovesick teenager," he shot Spock a look that may have been full of some of his old fire, "You're right to reject your human half, Spock. Humans are far too egotistic, far too vulnerable to being told what they want to hear. In the end I lost something precious, something sacred; and I can never get it back."

"Jim," Spock said, steady as a planet in orbit,"I see no logic in remonstrating yourself for something over which you have no control. You _are_ human. I also see no logic in blaming yourself for actions you took when suffering amnesia from a serious head injury. Had you truly been yourself, your actions would have been much different."

Jim seemed to consider that, at least.

"No," he said, softly, "It isn't logical. But there it is. They should be honoring you as their god and savior Spock, not me," he paused and when he drank from the glass this time it was a small swallow and not the entire contents.

Spock remained quiet and slipped easily into the discipline of logic. The simple fact was that all of them were no doubt being honored as gods and would be for the rest of time in that culture. There was no logic in debating it.

Then he leaned forward and forced Jim to look at him with the sheer intensity of his gaze.

"It is not wrong to have survived," Spock said bluntly. He was determined to restore his Captain, even if he had to drag each piece of him back through the eye of the needle one at a time. "She died trying to save you, because her life was less important to her than yours. It is now your task to continue for as long as possible and to do so in a way that embraces life. To do less is to dishonor her memory and her sacrifice."

The door chime interrupted him and Spock looked once more at Jim, but he had turned inward once more, either shocked by what Spock had said or denying it.

"Come," Spock said, knowing who it was. There was only one person it could be.

McCoy stood briefly in the doorway and then stepped gingerly inside.

He looked at Spock and for a moment they shared a silent exchange of what they had been through during the long months of Kirk's disappearance; and of such comfort as they had dared give each other even in the worst moments of bickering. Jim's pain they could ease. Losing him altogether was a nightmare, one they had barely survived before. In one long look, McCoy told Spock, this- Jim here and alive even if his heart was burned to ashes - was better than the alternative.

"Come in, doctor," Spock said, and his voice seemed to give the simple phrase multiple meaning.

Jim looked up then, straight at McCoy and suddenly both of them were speaking at once.

"Jim, I did everything I could…"

"Not your fault, Bones, you did everything you could…."

And then they both stopped speaking and just stared at each other. Jim indicated the chair beside Spock.

"Sit down, Bones," Jim said, his voice gruff with emotion. Spock got up long enough to get McCoy a glass and then sat back down again.

They lapsed into silence then, a comfortable silence in which Jim knew he was welcome to speak or not. He could rely on the depth of their love for him and trust that they would not trespass any further than he could bear.

Each of them had lived on the final frontier of death and still dared to become friends, to love; even McCoy who had fought death on his own terms and would do so many times again, even Spock though he would still deny it even to himself. It was their nature, the nature of the universe, and what man and all intelligent life had lived with, always. To love often meant to lose. Love was only truly given when one accepted that the loved one will someday die, and loved in spite of it. Without accepting that risk, Terrans would never have ventured out of their caves, much less ventured to the stars; those first brave Vulcans, knowing they risked certain death would never have marched across the Plain of Blood into the camp of their enemies and sued for peace.

It was unendurable and yet endured, for the sake of these moments.

Or maybe it endured because of the moments she had given him; for the sake of the memories, for the sake of her dreams of what their life together would be. As long as he remembered her, as long as his heart still beat with passion for her, she would never really be gone.

He looked up to find his two friends watching him – Spock Vulcan somber, McCoy Human miserable – but both at his side, willingly, as always.

And as he had always known, deep in his wounded, passion-branded soul – James Kirk turned his back on his past and moved to embrace his future.


End file.
